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for his disposition, while, for my part, I felt intimidated by his perpetual air of intellectual superiority. I felt certain that he took a dim view of many of my antics, such as my prank of loosening the library bookshelves so that they would collapse whenever somebody returned a weighty volume. Dave’s skepticism toward me was probably not much helped by the fact that he held strong religious beliefs and was close to the school’s Christian Movement, with whom I, for some reason, had a bad reputation.
    Dave and I were rivals for the affections of certain schoolmates of the female persuasion. He caused me considerable torment when he succeeded in snogging Denise McIntyre, the unwitting object of my adoration, whom I made a point of sitting next to in most classes. My distress when Denise blithely informed me of their brief encounter was only mildly mollified by her appraisal of my rival as a “sloppy kisser.”
    Adam Clayton arrived at Mount Temple in 1976 and made an immediate impact. There was his dress sense, for one thing. The school did not have a uniform policy but among the pullovers and anoraks that passed for teen fashion in Dublin in the late seventies Adam’s long Afghan coat with shaggy trimmings and decorative stitched flowers certainly stood out. He would, from time to time, sport a caftan beneath this beloved garment and went through a phase of wearing a yellow workman’s helmet on top of his mop of blond curls.
    Adam was a gangly, upper-middle-class English boy with an insouciant line in faux sophistication that seemed to implicitly suggest he had already “been there, seen that, done it” at the age of not-so-sweet sixteen. He had certainly been to more places and seen and done more than most of his contemporaries at Mount Temple, arriving at school fresh from a holiday in Pakistan, where he had hung out with hippies, smoked joints and engaged in a torrid romantic affair (or so he claimed). Adam had a rebellious, confrontational attitude toward authority that was only mildly disguised by his broad smile and impeccable manners. He carried a flask of coffee around with him, from which he would pour himself cups during lessons. When asked by exasperated teachers what he thought he was up to, he would politely explain that he was having a cup of coffee, always remembering to add “sir” or “miss’ where appropriate. Adam was unfailingly courteous but determined to go his own way—which was often straight to detention.
    The last of the future superstars was Larry Mullen. He was in the year below mine, and was a handsome, self-contained blond kid who, at that stage, simply did not register on any of our consciousnesses. But Larry was the start of it all.
    In autumn 1976, during my second year at Mount Temple, a notice appeared on the board in the Mall, the corridor that ran the length of the principal school building where we used to hang out. “Drummer looking for musicians to form band. Contact Larry Mullen, third year.” At thirteen, my brother was a year below Larry, but, as the proud possessor of a Teisco Stratocaster–copy electric guitar, Ivan was invited to audition. On Saturday, September 25, 1976, he turned up at Larry’s modest semidetached house in Artane along with Paul, Adam, Dave and his elder brother, Dick Evans.
    So that’s Ivan McCormick, right? Despite spending most of his life as a musician, being present at the early rehearsals for the group that would become U2 is Ivan’s sole claim to anything approaching fame. And then a sloppy biographer handed it to his older brother, robbing him of even this footnote in rock history. So I am happy to have this opportunity to set the record straight. My brother was the loser who let superstardom slip through his careless fingers, not me.
    The assembled ranks of would-be rock stars crowded into the Mullens’ kitchen to discuss their plans over tea and crackers. It was, as Ivan